Mother of all Ironies John Sweeney?s BBC docume…
Mother of all Ironies
John Sweeney?s BBC documentary ?The Mother of all Ironies? questions the level of child mortality caused by UN sanctions on Iraq. His short previewing article in The Observer gives prominence to Saddam's cruel techniques for spreading this ?propaganda?. He also mentions bin Laden using it as a reason for the 911 attacks. Isn?t it horrible fact or fiction rather than propaganda? Would we say that the September 11th attacks were ?great propaganda? for the West? Yes, probably, and it would be true, but we also know it to be a cruel irrelevance in the face of such horror. So what are the facts behind the political posturing?
Sweeney?s article tells us how Saddam?s regime collected dead bodies to display as victims of sanctions. He scorns the possibility that there might be some truth in the effects of the sanctions. Maybe the documentary will investigate it? John Pilger tells us that ?Denis Halliday, head of the UN humanitarian programme in Iraq, resigned claiming he could no longer administer 'an immoral and illegal' policy. His successor, Hans von Sponeck also later resigned, along with the head of the World Food Programme.? Sweeney only alludes to them in a snide remark. He does say that the figures (and perhaps the experience?) prompting such resignations are ?open to question? ? perhaps as ?open to question? as the projection of 20,000 dead or more post-911 but since reduced to much less? Do we dismiss US citizens distress over 911, or the need to halt such attacks, because their figures are ?open to question?? Surely the important thing to do would be to uncover some facts? Instead Sweeney says that ?it is an absolute of the government of Iraq - and others - that thousands of Iraqi children are dying every month because of sanctions.? With that sneering, patronising aside - "and others" - Sweeney places anyone who questions the West in Saddam?s camp. This, it seems, is also an absolute.
While Sweeney dismisses the mortality figures because they are likely to be tainted by employees of the Iraqi state, he quotes without question - and without irony - a Sussex University ?chemical weapons researcher? who rubbishes claims that birth defects and cancers in southern Iraq were caused by Western bombs: ?It's much more likely to be chemical weapons? dropped by Saddam. That is, like the thousands of Kurds gassed by Saddam in the mid-80s; that is, when Saddam was funded by the West. Sweeney?s history doesn?t go back before the invasion of Kuwait. I wonder why?
Medialens has a history of the British media?s coverage of Iraq.
